Fallon vs. Sayer — 16-year-old feud in court

Chronicle courthouse reporter Mary Flood spent Monday in a courtroom watching a long-simmering feud involving the head of Houston’s largest teachers union play out. Here’s what Flood reported:

The stormy relationship between Houston Federation of Teachers president Gayle Fallon and Coletta Sayer, a former head of a competing teacher’s association, played out in an unpleasant day-long court hearing Monday.

It was a hearing on whether Fallon should be sanctioned for filing a frivolous lawsuit against Sayer.

Harris County Civil District Judge Tony Lindsay stopped the hearing at 5:30 p.m. and said Fallon had a justifiable legal right to sue Sayer for libel and then drop the lawsuit short of depositions. But the judge also said she felt it was unfair to Sayer, whose meandering and scattered testimony clearly attracted the judge’s sympathy.

Fallon on the stand

“I’m sorry that I cannot find anything to benefit Ms. Sayer in this matter,” said Lindsay, who also noted Sayer was indeed on shaky ground when she started publicly accusing Fallon of crimes such as falsifying records and stealing from HISD.

The root of this problem started 16 long years ago when Sayer left her classroom for a few days in 1992 to recruit for the Houston Federation of Teachers. In 1994 Sayer asked HISD to investigate whether the union ever paid the school district back the less than $600 for her time. The union didn’t pay until early 1995.

Then in 1997, Sayer publicly accused Fallon of fraud at an HISD school board meeting. Testimony showed Sayer also asked the FBI to investigate Fallon, sent mass e-mails bad-mouthing Fallon and wrote against Fallon on Web sites.

Fallon filed a defamation lawsuit against Sayer in 1997 and dropped it in September of this year, just before depositions were about to be taken. The pair were in court Monday because Sayer argued Fallon’s lawsuit was frivolous. Sayer’s attorney Joe Larsen (who has represented the Houston Chronicle) argued Fallon, the union and her lawyers should be sanctioned for forcing Sayer to defend herself then pulling the lawsuit but still threatening to sue again if Sayer keeps speaking her mind.

Sayer in court

Fallon testified that people whose trust she depended upon started asking her about Sayer’s false accusations and she had to put an end to it.

“I have suffered damage to my reputation and frankly, to me that’s priceless,” said Fallon, who has run the teacher union for 26 years. She said her union board voted to file and pay for the lawsuit on behalf of Fallon and the union.

She said she later decided to drop the lawsuit because litigation is too expensive for a union whose members are facing the economic pressure of a post-Hurricane Ike financial crunch.

Fallon said she assumed Sayer’s Houston Classroom Teachers Associationwould pay for her costs. Buy Sayer said she mortgaged a house she inherited to pay $50,000 to defend the lawsuit, which never even got to depositions.

“I was never obsessed with her. She is so synonymous with our district. Teachers must take back the profession,” Sayer said in testimony that was disjointed and difficult to follow.

After the judge denied her motion, Sayer said she felt vindicated anyway. “Ms. Fallon is a bully and as classroom teacher I know it’s important to stand up to a bully,” Sayer said.

The judge said she thought it “unfair” to have a “powerful union” file this is lawsuit to squash Sayer. But the judge said it was a legally proper lawsuit.

Lindsay said that she thought Fallon likely would have lost the defamation lawsuit she abandoned just last month. The judge said Fallon was very aggressive in defending herself, readily files lawsuits and that Fallon probably got what she wanted by filing the lawsuit and then dropping it just before depositions were to be held.

4 Responses

For the record: Never at any time did I state or implied Gayle Fallon was guilty of any crime other than a cruel betrayal of the trust I had and have no longer. I am neither judge nor jury. Whether Fallon was or wasn’t guilty of any crime is not in my jurisdiction.

My public statement, “I turned the union in for an alleged theft of service” in 1994 is a matter of fact. I did. Documents supporting the good faith of that action are archived in HISD’s legal department.

I never said Fallon falsified my employee records. I said my records were falsified to show me present at my duty station when in fact I was recruiting for the union on HISD’s dime. The time I spent recruiting for HFT was coded on my payroll transmittal as Code H>Dr. Petruzielo approved paid leave.

Ms. Fallon says she asked HISD repeatedly to send her an invoice for my time. If Ms. Fallon had asked the board for the invoice she claimed to want then, perhaps, it would have arrived before HISD’s investigation into an alleged theft of service? Two years and one investigation later, Ms. Fallon was sent an invoice and wrote a check to HISD for my time.

My duty station is anywhere HISD pays me to be. Code H meant I was paid for recruiting for HFT while paid by HISD at least until the check was cashed a few years later. To put it perspective, I testified, under oath, there was little difference between Dr. Petruzielo granting me paid leave to recruit for the HFT and his granting me paid leave to mow Ms. Fallon’s lawn.

Furthermore, a union’s duty is to protect the careers of its members. It didn’t enhance the career of any teacher seen leaving the classroom, possibly as long as three weeks, to recruit members for HFT. It was not in the best interest for any member to do it. Fallon would have known that certainly.

When I was a member of her union, Fallon betrayed my trust…. yes, I know, I was surprised too. Very. So, I worked for over a decade to provide check and balance. Finally, I was compelled to ask the Houston Independent School District School Board to take action in that regard.

The HFT/Fallon v Sayer lawsuit was Fallon bullying for bucks. Fallon estimated I cost her a 25% increase in dues paying members. She believed I cost her the votes she needed to obtain exclusive consultation and concomitant membership growth. Exclusive consultation would have given her sole right to confer with HISD. (ATPE has an excellent website for those who would like to learn more about exclusive employee consultation in Texas public schools)

Fallon is arguably the most powerful politician never elected by the people. No district employee and very few elected officials can equal the egregious power of Gayle Fallon. I know Fallon as a ruthless opponent. However, I oppose Ms. Fallon because her politics and policies are NOT good for kids.

Frequently, while testifying, I was overwhelmed by recollections of what I have seen and experienced since leaving HFT. Hell hath no fury like a union scorned. Still, my testimony regarding Fallon was clear and to the point.

Fallon’s claim my emails “bad mouthed her” is hyperbole. I supported Lincoln Pettaway when he challenged her for HFT president. Until now, that was the only internet posting about her. When she filed suit, I felt strongly entitled to express my opinon about the lawsuit to my employers. It isn’t beyond imagining to think she may have tried to influence them to negatively impact my employment with HISD. What Fallon did is a common political dirty trick>do it to them then start yelling they did it to you, then sue. If I was as crafty as Fallon, I be annoucing myself as a candidate for HFT president a year from now. But, no one can out Fallon Fallon.

Caring about kids isn’t a cliché for me. Not only would I save my students or die trying; to protect them I now have debt I am unlikely to outlive. That is the second greatest love. And, love is the biggest difference between Ms. Fallon and me…. long simmering feud not withstanding.

As for the allegation stating I wanted the FBI to “investigate” Fallon/HFT. It was the payroll code issue that sent me to the FBI in 1997 when I requested the HISD investigation through open records. Fallon testified that it is common to lease school district employees to teacher organizations. HISD’s investigation did not address the payroll code problem and offer a solution. With nothing in writing and no specified code indicating the employee was paid but leased to an outside organization, how is any school district (including HISD) to know which paid approved leaves are for a school district’s direct benefit and which approved paid coded leaves are actually a district leasing out its employees to outside businesses with expectation of reimbursement? But, perhaps, someone should investigate whether there was a conspiracy to deny my civil rights. One person trying to silence me and deprive me of my contractual property rights is mean spirited; more than one could be seen as a conspiracy to deny my civil rights and THAT is within the jurisdiction of the FBI. An interesting area which might have gone unnoticed had the opposition not intentionally misconstrued then wrongly elaborated on my truncated comment about contacting the FBI in 1997.

The following is an example of the “mass” emails Fallon claims I sent to “bad mouth: her. Fallon is only part of the cultural climate in HISD but . Fallon is obsessed with Ms. Fallon not me. Be that as it may, the following is offered as example of the”mass” emailings by me:

From: Saavedra, Abelardo

Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 5:42 PM

To: Sayer, Coletta B

Subject: RE: HISD teacher and professional organizational president responds to Chronicle editorial criticism of Dr. Saavedra, May 30, 2005

Thank you Coletta.

—–Original Message—–

From: Sayer, Coletta B

Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 3:28 PM

To: Saavedra, Abelardo

Cc: (media list)

Subject: HISD teacher and professional organizational president responds to Chronicle editorial criticism of Dr. Saavedra, May 30, 2005

Houston Independent School District Superintendent Dr. Saavedra inherited a culture where honesty was the fruit of limited ambition. For too many years job security in HISD was based on adherence to company creed no matter how little pedagogical or ethical sense it made. Keeping the job interfered with doing the job. Such a policy doesn’t breed the brains out of an organization, it breeds out the integrity.

Recently, as president of the Houston Classroom Teachers Association, I gave a speech to the school board expressing my frustration with the historic opportunistic culture of HISD. I told the Houston Independent School District School Board: once I tried to right wrong where I found it because I believed people who did so made a difference. But, after a decade’s exposure to influence bartering, ethics of expediency, and the bastardization of a school district for political purposes, I was numbed. I no longer tried to right wrong. I tried to remember the difference.

Dichotomy between what is right to do and what is smart to do creates cognitive dissonance. When one cannot exercise liberty of conscience without fear then economic impressment creates an atmosphere where you and those around you learn to silence the voice meant to help us differentiate right from wrong. In that atmosphere right becomes the art of the possible and even the perpetrators of wrong are its victims.

In no way do I mean excuse those who have done wrong in HISD. Yet, it is humbling to recall what passes for virtue in many people is actually lack of opportunity. In that light, we would all be wise to remember only the purely innocent have a right to demand strict justice; the rest of us would do well to prefer mercy.

Dr. Saavedra will need time and our support to change a culture which cultivated opportunism rather than altruism. But he needs our help. As employees of the Houston Independent School District we must challenge ourselves to find a wrong and right it. Heal a hurt. Take a stand. And put fear aside. Our superintendent and our children deserve the people we all could be if we put service to others above service to self.

We owe to them. We owe it to ourselves to remember again.

(Once I rememberd again, I couldn’t forget again and that is why Ms. Fallon needed to silence me)

This the ONE on-line posting interpreted by Fallon as “multiple” on-line postings. It was an opinion piece posted in the Forum section of the Guidry On-line News Station. Every HISD employee is affected by the HFT elections whether or not they are active HFT members. I am a former HFT member.

Gayle Fallon Challenged in HFT election

by Coletta Keenan Sayer

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

In January, I addressed the Houston Independent School Board to explain why I joined an organization for teachers run by teachers when I left HFT. It is because those who drink from the same well as teachers are unlikely to poison it. Teachers must take back our profession…from business, politicians, and union bosses.

This is why I believe a change in leadership in HFT would benefit all teachers, regardless of professional affiliation. I was gratified to learn Lincoln Pettaway, a currently employed high school teacher in HISD, is challenging Gayle Fallon for president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.

I am not anti-union…I am anti-union power structure as it exists in HISD. I will happily rejoin HFT the day an actively employed teacher from HISD becomes president. Teachers working in our district should head our teacher organizations. People responsible for representing employees in HISD should BE employees in HISD. If it safe for them to act their conscience then it is safer for all of us to do so.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely….union power in the hands of one person for decades is not wholesome for the taxpayers, students, or teachers in HISD.